Gains on the Go: Your Guide to Muscle Growth While Travelling

Don’t let your travel plans get in the way of your training goals. Get maximum results with minimal equipment!

If you worry about losing your hard-earned gains when you travel, it’s time to stop fretting and do something about it. Start with this four-point guide to making a plan for your on-the-road fitness. Not having access to a gym or a lot of training equipment is no longer a reason to miss a workout even if you’re on the road. Plus, there are crucial nutritional quick fixes that can boost your performance and keep your body’s anabolic action switched on.

1. Think Minimal Equipment

Your workouts can, in fact, be completed with the use of your own body weight and either a pair of dumbbells or a single kettlebell. As counterintuitive as that may sound, some of my best workouts have taken place on the road like that. What makes this minimal training maximally effective, though, is the weight, or load, you choose. While load specificity depends on several factors, including your relative strength level and training experience with certain types of equipment, here are some general guidelines to consider.

Select a load that you can move well and without stopping. It should be challenging but not so challenging that you break your form on any exercise. You should be able to train proficiently with this load for at least 30 seconds without stopping.

2. Be Aware of Time Efficiency

Your workouts should be effective and efficient, easily completed in less than 45 minutes, including a 5-10-minute warm-up. Whether you’re vacationing or traveling for work, no one wants an inordinate dose of training time to interfere with the main purpose of the trip.

Here are three highly effective work/rest templates that will leave you feeling pushed, challenged, and unstoppable after a fast, furious training session. Use the option that best suits you and your current level of fitness.

1. Perform repeat bouts of 30 seconds of non-stop work alternated with 10 seconds of passive rest.
2. Do repeat bouts of 45 seconds of non-stop work alternated with 15 seconds of passive rest.
3. Do repeat bouts of 60 seconds of non-stop work alternated with 20 seconds of passive rest.

I prefer to create a unique timer in my phone and mix and match the three work/rest templates above. Make sure to prepare mentally for sprint-type work so you drive your physical capacity to go all-out for the designated work interval and train yourself to recover as quickly as possible during the passive rest interval.

You will exhaust and highly challenge your immediate, ATP-CP, and glycolytic energy systems, which operate during work bouts lasting roughly 30-60 seconds, depending on your fitness level and training experience.

Here are two sample workouts that combine the three templates above. For each round:

• 30 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest
• 45 seconds of work, 15 seconds of rest
• 60 seconds of work, 20 seconds of rest

The total time for each round is 3 minutes: 2.25 minutes of work and 45 seconds of rest.

• Workout A: 10 Rounds = 30 minutes of total time = 22.5 minutes of work and 7.5 minutes of passive rest
• Workout B: 13 Rounds = 39 minutes of total time = 29.25 of work and 9.75 minutes of passive rest

3. Focus on Intensity

Your workouts should be flat-out hard. You won’t stand around much, you will sweat, and you should step outside of your comfort zone. A relatively short session means you have to train with an all-out mindset. If you examine the two sample workouts closely, you’ll see that the time spent actually moving is less than 30 minutes in both cases. Based on my personal and professional experience, I believe that is a perfect amount of time for you to work extremely hard and come out of the workout feeling both challenged and accomplished.

Make it your number-one priority to lift nonstop during your work intervals. Occasionally pausing your timer is perfectly acceptable; I do it all the time, especially to hydrate, sip on my supplements, and ensure that the quality of my training session remains sky-high.

Ideally, you would never set down your weight(s) during a work interval; you want to recover as quickly as possible during your very brief rest periods and be ready to go at the very beginning of every new work interval.

4. Target Your Whole Body

Your workouts should hit the entire body with the primary muscle groups—the big, compound muscles. Emphasize multijoint exercises, and make a balanced attack by selecting exercises that work opposing muscle groups; for example, chest and back.

In choosing the exercises for your total-body workout, consider the following points:

• Use multijoint exercises such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, Romanian deadlifts, swings, high pulls, shoulder presses, chest presses, push-ups, rows, and upright rows.
• Look for balance and variety. Generally, you want to pick 6-12 different exercises, including upper-body and lower-body moves.
• Also select 2-4 exercises that are not resistance based for cardio and/or active recovery, such as jumping jacks, mountain climbers, bodyweight squat jumps, split-squat jumps, sprints/high knees, planks/bridges, and ab/trunk work.
• Organize your workout along a classic sequence of exercises; for example, performing multijoint exercises plus isolation exercises for each individual muscle group, alternating opposing muscle groups, and/or alternating upper-body and lower-body muscle groups.

Supplementation Is King

When I travel, convenience trumps everything. Make it easy for yourself to fuel your body properly with minimal prep time when you’re on the go. No solid food and Tupperware; just one shaker bottle and two main supplements…easy breezy!

Blazing the Road to Growth

There’s no excuse to skip training when you’re on the road. My best advice is to plan ahead. Write up a few different training protocols using my recommendations, pack your supplements, and bring your equipment and workout clothes. Then, find an open space—an open field, your hotel room, or even the hotel fitness center—focus your mind, and keep those gains coming!